Keeping you informed about Palestinian cultural heritage research, and our work here at the Archive

Keeping you informed about Palestinian cultural heritage research, and our work here at the Archive

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

People we'd like to invite to morning tea: Iain Banks

Iain Banks
Source: courtesy The Independent

Here on the Palestine Costume Archive's staff blog we have a post category for "people we'd like to invite for morning tea". These are people we admire, who'd we'd like to spend some time with. From queens to celebrity chefs, over the years we've invited lots of people to take us up on our invite and come join us for our tea break, we even promise to share some home made cakes.  Today we'd like to invite Iain Banks.

As we wrote on Facebook today:
"We were sorry to hear the attached news about Iain Banks, an author who's science fiction novels have brought great joy to our lives. He is also one of the good guys politically, calling in 2010 for a cultural and educational boycott on Israel following its raid on a flotilla of ships carrying aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip. Banks wrote in a letter to the Guardian newspaper that he had instructed his agent to turn down any further book translation deals with Israeli publishers: 
"Appeals to reason, international law, U.N. resolutions and simple human decency mean — it is now obvious — nothing to Israel... I would urge all writers, artists and others in the creative arts, as well as those academics engaging in joint educational projects with Israeli institutions, to consider doing everything they can to convince Israel of its moral degradation and ethical isolation, preferably by simply having nothing more to do with this outlaw state" 
"See his Wiki page for more details. We send our love and prayers to Iain and his family, and thank him again for his political courage and for writing magical novels that challenged and delighted us :)"
Now we know Mr Banks is no longer taking on any public commitments, but that doesn't mean we still can't send out an invite for him to join us for a cyber cuppa in our little corner of the interweb.  And if he can't attend, well no matter, we'll still raise a toast to him. Because his science fiction books especially have brought great joy to our lives over many years, including during some dark moments after the last Gaza trip.  We'd like to reassure him that we will share The Culture with each new friend and new generation. And to promise him that Wiki's List of Culture ships/ names will never stop making us smile.

Iain Banks: thank you :)

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